Katie McGee and the No Good, Very Bad Exams
by sasha1600
Summary: It's the end of term, and Katie McGee can't wait to be done.  Part of the 'Future Perfect' universe.
1. Chapter 1

**Katie McGee and the No Good, Very Bad Exams**

**Summary:** It's the end of term, and Katie McGee can't wait to be done. Part of the 'Future Perfect' universe.

**Disclaimer:** Katie and Leigh are mine; the rest belong to other people.

* * *

A/N: This takes place in the 'Future Perfect' universe, which features Katie and Leigh, the twin daughters of Tim and Abby.

Thanks to AislingK for writing Katie's math for me!

* * *

_Seriously?_ Katie thought to herself, scrawling an angry red circle around the offending answer and dropping the exam booklet onto the 'done' pile with a sigh. _The question _defines_ t as 'time in the oven', genius! Where did you get the idea that it's 'number of chickens'? I mean, really... even if you can't handle the math, surely you can _read_!_

She took a sip of her coffee, wishing for the fourth time in an hour that she had something alcoholic to put in it, and glanced around the room while she reached for the next exam. She really needed to finish the grading tonight, she thought, so she'd have time to tidy her tiny apartment before she left for home for the holidays. Uncle Gibbs would be horrified if he could see what it looked like now... as would her naval officer sister, who had somehow morphed from a messy tomboyish teenager to an obsessively tidy young woman. Katie had always been the neater of the twins, but her usual habits just didn't stand up at the end of term.

Every flat surface was strewn with paper, most of it still left over from her frantic end-of-term assignment-writing. She could see at least two empty pizza boxes stacked on the floor, and more empty soda cans than she'd like to admit were strewn around the small room. She simply hadn't had any time to clean up, between meeting her own deadlines and getting swamped with grading for the introductory calculus class for which she was a teaching assistant. _Grading slave_, she thought bitterly.

She was sitting cross-legged on her futon/couch, two piles of exams – done and to-do – at her feet. The to-do pile was getting smaller, much to her relief. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take, and felt like her brain was about to explode from exposure to too much stupid. For a selective university that claimed to educate only the best and the brightest, there were a surprising number of idiots in her class. Sure, there were good students as well, including a few who reminded her of herself as a freshman, and a couple of others who were not naturally good at math, but who worked hard - she'd given a quiet cheer when she'd assigned one of them a B- on the final, a considerable improvement over his bare-pass on the midterm. But too many of them were lazy, and there were a few who could only be described as _dumb_.

She opened another exam booklet, skimming quickly through the answers. She wasn't even looking at the answer key anymore; she'd done enough of these to have memorised what the answers were supposed to be, and to be able to recognise the most common errors in her sleep. _Literally_, she thought, remembering last night's dream/nightmare sequence.

She got to the last question, and burst out laughing. The professor teaching the course insisted on using practical real-world applications of the math they were studying, in an effort to convince the students that it really wasn't just random numbers on a page and that it actually meant something that they should care about. So, the question began with a premise that a chicken is being cooked, and concerned a function giving the temperature of the chicken according to the time it's been in the oven. This kid had responded earnestly, "The fact that f'(20)=2 means that after 20 minutes there are now two chickens in the oven." _Oh, those must be the magical doubling chickens!_ _Well, that's one way to solve the problem of world hunger_! she thought, still giggling.


	2. Chapter 2

Tim answered the ringing phone without looking at the number. At this time of night, chances were good that it was work.

To his delight, it was his grad-student daughter.

'Hi Katie! How's it goi...'

He didn't get to finish the question before Katie started venting her frustration. Loudly. Holding the phone away from his ear, he exchanged an amused look with Abby, who reached over and took the phone away from him.

'That good, huh?' she said, quickly pulling the phone away from her ear, just in case.

It didn't take long to determine that the complaint-of-the-moment was about two students who had decided to copy each others' work on the final exam, with the result that Katie ended up spending more time filling in academic offence paperwork than the kids probably had spent studying.

In an effort to inject some tension-lessening humour into the situation, Tim commented that he knew all about the paperwork involved in dealing with delinquents. A moment too late, he realised that he'd failed to take into consideration just how stressed-out Katie was.

His ear still ringing from Katie's exasperated shriek, and his shoulder smarting from Abby's hard swat, Tim swallowed a comment that would probably get him into even more trouble and backed away, wondering how long he should wait before asking if he could have his phone back.


	3. Chapter 3

Katie pumped one fist in the air, dropping the last exam booklet onto the 'done' pile. She saved the spreadsheet where she'd been recording the students' grades, and emailed it to the professor she TA-ed for, with a note that she'd drop off the exams in the morning. The timing would be a bit tight – she still hadn't packed, and she needed to at least round up the trash before leaving for the airport – but right now, she didn't care. She was definitely, definitely, done.

Instead of shutting down the laptop, she scrolled quickly through her music files. _Let the Christmas holiday begin_, she thought. Finding what she was looking for, she turned the volume up as high as it would go and clicked on the song she wanted. As the first notes sounded, she leapt to her feet and danced a little jig across the floor, singing along.

It was only when she heard the aggressive pounding on her floor – her neighbour's ceiling – that she thought to look at the clock. She lunged at the computer, banging her shin painfully on the corner of the coffee table in her frantic attempt to shut off the music.

_Even if it _is _the perfect 'the grading is finished and I'm going home!' song, 3:07 a.m. probably isn't the best time to be blaring the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah_, she thought sheepishly.


End file.
